What do totalitarian governments do? They spy on their citizens -- all of them

The revelations of government spying on innocent Americans are piling up.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the National Security Agency gathers data on the phone calls of 107.3 million wireless customers of AT&T, 98.9 million wireless customers of Verizon, 31.2 million landline customers of AT&T, 22.2 million landline customers of Verizon, and 55 million customers of Sprint.
The Journal says,

"The practice, which evolved out of warrantless wiretapping programs begun after 2001, is now approved by all three branches of the U.S. government."

How can a program that is secret and unknown to most of the citizenry be considered "approved?" If the details are so secret that only a handful of Members of Congress know about them -- and they are constrained from talking about them -- how can these programs be considered "approved?"

Marylanders -- write to your Member of Congress

Friends, Here's the letter I just sent to my Member of Congress (April 12, 2013)

You can send a form letter drafted by the Marijuana Policy Project from here.

Dear Rep. Van Hollen:

Please cosponsor H.R. 1523, the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act, introduced by three Republicans (Reps. Rohrabacher, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), and Don Young (R-AK)) and three Democrats (Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Jared Polis (D-CO)).

The bill would create an exemption in the Controlled Substances Act for anyone acting in compliance with state marijuana laws. If an individual is following state law, he or she would not be prosecuted and imprisoned by the federal government.

A few days ago, the Maryland General Assembly overwhelmingly passed H.B. 1101, which Gov. O'Malley is expected to sign, that would authorize Maryland medical centers like Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Schools of Medicine to distribute marijuana to patients.

A key concern those large institutions will have to address before participating is the impact of federal law on them. This bill would enable the Maryland law to be carried out by these institutions without fear of federal interference.

Thus it is critical to the interests of the people of Maryland that this bill be enacted. Your support is critical to getting this bill passed.

Since your first year in Congress, you have repeatedly voted for the Hinchey-Rohrabacher-Farr amendments to the Department of Justice Appropriations bills that would bar DEA from spending to prosecute marijuana cases that are medical, in states with medical marijuana laws. This bill would accomplish that purpose more directly and comprehensively.

Please side with the people and the State of Maryland by co-sponsoring the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. To do so, please contact Jeff Vanderslice in Rep. Rohrabacher's office.

Sonic Sweet Spot: the NYC studio of Alex Sterling

Read about the work of audio engineer and producer Alex Sterling!

Why is George Will so snarky?

Long-time conservative columnist George Will wrote about airline competition in The Washington Post today, April 15, 2012. It is an important and serious subject. But along the way he said, "Intellectuals are often the last to learn things," to attack a 1958 claim by John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist who taught at Harvard University.

Why smear people who try to think seriously about important matters? Aren't columnists who write about airline competition pretty close to being "intellectual" if they are not actual "intellectuals?"

Will writes, "Undiscouraged by evidence, in 1967 Galbraith, full of the progressive's enthusiasm for the administrative state, asserted in 'The New Industrial State' that the U.S. economy would soon be dominated by large corporations essentially immune from competition and hence from market turbulence."

If this is what Galbraith wrote, it seems that he was wrong about immunity from competition but was he wrong that the economy would be dominated by large corporations?

Why be so snarky -- especially about 50 and 60 year old arguments? It doesn't seem to be the case that Galbraith was writing specifically about airline regulation or competition. And considering that the sixth anniversary of Galbraith's death is in two weeks, it seems downright rude to be so gratuitously insulting to someone who is dead.

This kind of writing does not contribute to a more civil or more thoughtful society -- just a more nasty one.

Voting in the Maryland primary election today

Today, April 3, is the primary election in Maryland, where I am registered to vote. We vote on a computer touch screen. I checked in and up came Barack Obama. I touched the blank box, and it turned red with a black X in it. And then I thought about the DEA/IRS/U.S. Marshals raid in Oakland yesterday at Oaksterdam University and the temporary detention of Richard Lee, the man who financed most of Proposition 19, the 2010 vote in California to legalize marijuana there.

I unchecked my vote for Obama! I voted for uncommitted. And I did not vote for any delegates to the Democratic convention who were committed to him, with the exception of a personal friend.

How could I vote for an administration that has demonstrated hostility to so many people I know the day after they raided Oaksterdam University to use law enforcement to retaliate against a political dissident?

I've known Richard Lee for almost twenty years. I worked with him to try to pass Proposition 19, which received 46.5 percent of the vote.

Why did the U.S. government raid Oaksterdam University yesterday? Was it because Oaksterdam posed some emerging critical threat to the health and welfare of the people of Oakland or the the people of California or the United States? No.

I think the raid was conducted to protect President Obama from potential embarrassment at the April 14-15 Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. This raid was staged now so that President Obama can reject discussion of marijuana legalization, and deny the assertion that in California, "marijuana is legal."

How could I vote for an Administration that used the awesome power of federal law enforcement for political advantage? The day after that cynical misuse of power? No!

What alternative better explains the timing of this raid?
In recent weeks, the Presidents of Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico, which for years have been facing the incomprehensible violence of warring illegal drug gangs and and their corrupting power due to their profits from drug prohibition, have encouraged discussion of "market alternatives" to prohibition, that is, discussion of legalization or regulation of the commerce in drugs.

The United States government remains steadfastly opposed to any serious discussion of this approach to drug control. Last month, it sent Vice President Joe Biden on a mission to Central America to attempt to squelch any such discussion.

Many American voters are in families that emigrated to the United States from Latin America. They are likely to be attentive to the news from the Summit of the Americas. President Obama, facing the voters in 7 months, dreads any news that will rival his message of adeptly managing relations with the rest of the hemisphere, especially over economic issues.

Certainly since I went to Latin America in 1983, helping to staff a Congressional Delegation that was meeting the Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers of Interior and Justice, etc. of Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Jamaica, leaders of those nations have expressed their frustration that large number of Americans pay billions of dollars to consume large volumes of drugs produced in their countries. This large demand for drugs continues, year after year, decade after decade, seemingly with impunity, yet the greatest costs seem to be paid in the blood of Latin Americans. This argument is continuing to be made by current presidents, such as President Felipe Calderon of Mexico.

The raid against Richard Lee, probably America's most prominent, hands-on marijuana legalization activist and recent reform financier, is the latest crass, calculated move of the Obama Administration to rebut those charges.

Liberals fail to "prune" outmoded programs: David Brooks, New York Times

David Brooks wonders where the liberals have gone. Just as farmers weed the fields and sailors maintain their ships, Democrats who create government programs have an obligation to prune. He is right, of course.

The "war on drugs," a program that huge majorities recognize is not working, would be an excellent area for pruning. By the way, the Obama Administration cancelled the "Safe and Drug-Free Schools" program because it was not working, not because it was indifferent to teenage drug use.

Santorum tells N.H. he would ignore the Constitutional powers of the States to enforce his moral views

On Thurs., Jan. 5, 2012, I was in New Hampshire and heard Rick Santorum, candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, at a town hall event.* The last questioner, obviously believing the Santorum was a conservative, prefaced her question by noting that it is a core conservative principle that state and local governments have the power to govern themselves without federal interference, and asked, "if you were president would you protect gay marriage and medical marijuana laws and allow them to operate without federal interference?"

After the long digressions he is famous for, and being prodded by the audience for an answer at 3:21 in that video, Santorum said,

"states under the Constitution probably have the right to do medical marijuana laws but -- legally, but I don't think they morally have the right to do things that are harmful to the people in their community and therefore I think the federal government should step in."

Whoa Nellie! Notwithstanding his understanding that the Constitution legally permits states to "do medical marijuana laws," if he were President, he would direct the federal government to step in to stop them.

I have to wonder how many of the conservatives who voted for Santorum, or are planning to vote for him because of his religious and social views, are comfortable with such an expansive and cavalier view of the President's power to disregard the Constitution based on his "moral" judgement. For a candidate who cites wide ranges of sources in his speeches, he cited no authority other than his own ability to discern harms to people and to make a "moral" decision.

Would any strict constructionist or partisan of the "original intent" school of constitutional interpretation find Santorum's analysis a tolerable conception of the President's power?

*The town hall meeting was at the Grappone Conference Center in Concord, NH at the College Convention 2012 organized by New England College and sponsored by Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the AARP.